Sinclair B. Ferguson

And if you've got bad drawings, the building is going to be faulty.

And the same is true in the Christian life.

There's a very close relationship between our understanding of Christian doctrine and the way we live the Christian life.

I know people often say doctrine divides, experience unites.

But actually, if you think about it, that's not only far from the truth, it's almost the reverse of the truth.

The reality is that true doctrine unites, and the New Testament itself teaches us that.

And actually, when you think about it, in order to describe your experience, your spiritual experience, you need to use words.

You're describing your spiritual experience in doctrinal terms.

So doctrine is important.

And I want to think first of all today about what do we think about the doctrine of the Bible?

I remember years and years ago, I was reading a document called The Scots Confession.

It was written in 1560, and you'll know the name of at least one of the authors.

If you need a clue to guess his name, here's an unusual one.

For a century, this confession was a kind of guiding light to Scottish Christians, pointing them to Christ and the faith once delivered to the saints.

And in the introduction to it, this is what struck me, Knox and his friends wrote that if anyone found anything in the confession that was misleading, they should tell them, and they would respond to them, Knox wrote, and I'm quoting here, they would respond, from the mouth of God.

They were talking about the Bible, of course.

I remember my instantaneous thought was, what a tremendous way to describe the Bible, the mouth of God.

But then, of course, my next thought was it wasn't John Knox who came up with that expression.

It's how Jesus described the Bible.

You remember when he was tempted?